1338 Rafel’s Naivety Part 2 (1/2)

Dumont was displeased by Rafel's words. However, Rafel looked too naive to hold any hostile intentions even though her words made Dumont feel rather peculiar. Saleen to look after angels? A mage taking care of weapons of war of the gods? However, when he checked out the metal angels behind Rafel, they were indeed unnervingly powerful. He had thought those to be Saleen's puppets, but, by the look of things at the moment, those winged creatures were indeed angels after all.

”All right, have it your way.” Saleen looked exasperated as he let Rafel stand guard outside with the 200 metal angels. Rafel flashed a victorious smile and shook her fist in Dumont's direction.

Nailisi glared at Rafel in a hostile manner. That should have been my job. But then again, there was no way Nailisi would have parted with Saleen, who was about to enter the magic cube. Saleen's exasperated look was just a facade as well. If the mages of Holy Rock City were indeed up to no good, they would need to beware of Rafel, a level-13 archangel.

”Let's go, Nailisi,” Saleen called her and took her inside the magic cube along with Dumont. The place looked like many other common buildings, and Saleen was unable to sense any elemental fluctuations inside the magic cube, only regularly designed halls, corridors, and rooms. The place looked like the city buildings of the most downtrodden—dull, featureless, and devoid of decorations of any kind. However, Saleen was able nonetheless to peer into the secrets of the cube with his Elemental Eye, which secrets included special rooms. They were actually closer than they seemed at first. Optical illusions were hard to detect using magic. They were hard to see when searching using mental powers, unless one were to close one's eyes and shut oneself off from using sight altogether. Humans would have still been able to see things after closing their eyes, and that was something being developed by mages.

”The place looks weird, master.” Nailisi remained holding onto one weapon in her hand, while the Sword of Rules hung at her hips.

”How so?”

”Rules, different kinds of rules…”

Saleen only then came to discover that every single room he passed as he walked the corridor represented a region. The rules within the regions differed from one to another. The differences were minute, and Saleen had not been able to catch on due to his incomplete understanding of the peculiarities of rules. Nailisi, on the other hand, was able to catch on due to the effects of the Sword of Rules. The Sword of Rules elaborated the features of every region to Nailisi with every door they passed.

Dumont suppressed his awe and surprise. While the cube held massively vast numbers of secrets, no mage had been able to immediately discover any of them as soon as they entered before.

Saleen took the chance to take note of the minute differences between the rules. There were countless rules in the world, and they were of different levels. The lightning rules that Saleen had come to master belonged to very high-level ones. Rules of energy balance were on more or less the same level. However, there were some rules that only existed when specific conditions were met. Those rules were called secondary rules.

Most rules found within the magic cube were secondary ones that could only have existed in specific environments. However, the combination of these rules yielded interesting changes, making the cube as if it was another world on its own. If one was able to master the rules within, one would have become the highest being within the cube. Such a being would have been able to bring their highest combat capacity to bear, by making themselves the master of the rules. That was the most formidable part of the magic cube. The mages found in every room possessed not only elemental powers, but rule powers as well. Those rules were easy to master, yet, when they left the rooms, they were no longer able to make those rules their own. Things at the cube worked like the magic net, yet it was more powerful than the magic net.

Saleen got very interested in the place. If it had been possible, he would have wanted to create a magic cube in the Floating City as well. It was very difficult to enhance the magic net's powers. Saleen, at present, only enabled his enchanters to cast level-ten, sometimes level-11 magic spells. However, regardless of how enhanced the magic net became, it would not have enabled them to cast level-13 magic, and that was because the mental powers of enchanters could not be raised any further. Enchanters' mental powers could have continued to accumulate, grow, and advance like mages, if they had been subjected to specialized training. However, the speed of doing so would not have given them any edge at all.

That was to say that the magic net was at its most powerful at the moment. The magic cube, on the other hand, could have enabled the mages to master rules as soon as they walked inside. Even the lowest of rule powers would have enabled the mages' combat prowess to be raised to their theoretical pinnacle. For instance, Saleen had higher mental powers than Rafel. The combat capacity that he was able to bring to bear within the magic cube would have been no different than that of Rafel.

Amazingly, if both the magic cube and the magic net were combined, a monstrosity that had never been seen in human history could have been born. I need to get my hands on this!

Nailisi immediately caught on to what Saleen was thinking. She asked Dumont in a curious manner, ”Master, when was the magic cube built?”

”It was built alongside Holy Rock City, an elementally stable place. Building the magic cube took hundreds of years. There have even been some royal mages who have thought that if it had not been for the need to build the magic cube, the Qin Empire would have long conquered the entire Myers Mainland.”

Dumont never bothered holding anything back. Saleen would become royalty of the empire soon enough, and the magic cube, in a sense, would belong to Saleen as well.

It took over half an hour to walk past the rooms before they arrived at the center of the cube. Here, there was a tower-like building, or, precisely, a thick pillar. Rooms carved in the pillar had stone bridges linking the passages to outer areas. Speaking in terms of the structure of the building, it seemed as if they would have been able to reach where they were from any of the entrances. However, Saleen knew that if it had not been for Dumont leading the way, he would have simply been jumping at random between areas of the cube, just like when mages were tested with magic beasts, where they ran in a labyrinth until they ended up dead.

Dumont pointed at the stone bridge ahead and said, ”Your highness, Viscount Lex's room is right after the bridge.”